#AIDAN: Add Merrill and DJNF logos to top of doc # Student bios and pics in here too

Itinerary

Pre-Conference

  • By May 29: Students will have data assignments described.
  • By May 29: Students will be sent a data starter kit to load relevant software on their laptops and test out their equipment.
  • Due Thursday May 30, 11:59 p.m.: Students assigned to profile each other.

Sunday June 2, 2024

  • 2 p.m.: Welcome at Knight Hall Eaton Theater
    • Logistics. The week ahead. Rooms meals.
    • Profiles Introductions by students who profiled each other.
  • 3:30 p.m.: Use data to find stories. Finding Data for Projects (Wells). Eaton Theater
    • Students gather data for their assigned communities. Produce draft story ideas by 11:59 p.m.
  • 4:30 p.m.: Break and then independent work
  • 5:30 p.m.: Break
  • 6:30 p.m.: Dinner in Hyattsville - Busboys & Poets. (Meet at Knight Hall board van)

Monday June 3, 2024

  • Breakfast: On your own at dorm
  • 9 a.m.: Meet at Knight Hall Room 1101
    • Data Driven Reporting. (Sean Mussenden, the Howard Center)
      • R for data gathering and analysis
      • Bring material into R and make sense of it.
  • 10:30 a.m.: Break. Coffee served
  • 11 a.m.: Workshop: Use data to find stories. Pair students work on overview. Finding Data for Projects (Wells, Mussenden). Room 1101
  • 12:30 p.m.: Lunch in Knight Hall. (Gary Fields, AP Democracy Reporter. Confirmed). Eaton Theater
  • 1:30 p.m.: Writing a story pitch memo. (Wells and Denny). Room 1101
  • 2:30 p.m.: Students gather data for their assigned communities. Produce a story pitch memo by 11:59 p.m. (Wells, Mussenden, TA coach). Room 1101
  • 4 p.m.: Diversity: Covering All of the Community. (Prof. Christoph Mergerson). Room 1101
  • 5:30 p.m.: Break
  • 6:30 p.m.: Dinner on campus

Tuesday June 4, 2024

  • Breakfast: On your own at dorm
  • 9 a.m.: Data Visualization. Using Datawrapper for data visualization. (Adam Marton). Room 1101
  • 10:30 a.m.: Break. Coffee served
  • 11 a.m.: Workshop. Students work on R data gathering story pitches. (Wells, Marton, TA as coaches). Room 1101
  • 12 p.m. - 1 p.m.: Lunch. Sandwiches served in Knight Hall.
  • 1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.: Jeannine Aversa, U.S. Census Bureau or Bureau of Economic Analysis presentation on local GDP data and localizing stories with BEA data. Confirmed. Eaton Theater
  • 2:30 p.m. - 4 p.m.: Multimedia. (Josh Davidsburg) multimedia for the web, best practices for shooting photos and video with cell phones. Room 1101
  • 4 p.m.: Break. Drinks.
  • 4:30 p.m.: Multimedia / data workshop. Additional ideas techniques for gathering (Wells, Davidsburg, TA coach). Room 1101
  • 5:30 p.m.: Break
  • 6:30 p.m.: Dinner in Hyattsville - Franklins. (Meet at Knight Hall board van)

Wednesday June 5, 2024

  • Breakfast: On your own at dorm
  • 9 a.m.: Data Analysis. (Derek Willis, Merrill College) on GitHub pages, getting your data on the web. Room 1101
  • 10:30 a.m.: Break. Coffee served.
  • 11 a.m.: Workshop. Open workshop on projects. (Wells, Willis as coaches). Room 1101
  • 12:30 p.m.: Lunch in Knight Hall. Data analysis workshop. (Wells, Willis, TA coach). Room 1101
  • 1:30 p.m.: Speaker: Connie Mitchell Ford on business reporting. Room 1101
    • Three ways to get business and economic data and how to localize it. SEC and financial reports. Trade data.
  • 3 p.m.: Break
  • 3:30 p.m.: Workshop. Connie Mitchell Ford workshop on project proposals. (Wells, TA as coaches). Room 1101
  • 5 p.m.: Break
  • 6:30 p.m.: Dinner on campus
  • 11:59 p.m.: Second draft of reporting memos due

Thursday June 6, 2024

  • Breakfast: On your own at dorm
  • 8:30 a.m.: Meet at Knight Hall, board van, depart for College Park Metro
  • 10:00 a.m.: Tour U.S. Capitol press galleries with Siobhan Hughes, WSJ. Confirmed
  • Noon: Lunch in the U.S. Capitol. Meeting with other journalists.
  • 2 p.m.: Tour of Associated Press D.C. bureau. (Chad Day). Confirmed
  • 3:30 p.m.: Open to explore D.C. or join Wells for an adventure
  • 6 p.m.: Dinner in Washington D.C.: Ben’s Chili Bowl

Friday June 7, 2024

  • Breakfast: On your own at dorm
  • 9 a.m.: Using AI in journalism, algorithmic accountability. (Prof. Daniel Trielli)
    • Conceptual discussion of AI and possibilities
  • 10:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.: Break
  • 10:30 a.m.: Workshop on projects. (Wells, Trielli, TA coach)
  • 12:30 p.m.: Lunch in Knight Hall. (Prof. Kevin Blackistone on racial justice in sports business). Confirmed
  • 2 p.m.: Workshop on projects (Wells, TA coach)
  • 4 p.m.: Meet at Knight Hall, board van, depart for College Park Metro, dinner in Washington D.C., attend a community jazz show at Westminster Church. Meet with Rev. Brian Hamilton beforehand to discuss Southwest D.C. history

Saturday June 8, 2024

  • Breakfast: On your own at dorm
  • 10:00 a.m.: Students present web pages, story pitches, solicit feedback
  • 12:30 p.m.: Lunch in Knight Hall
  • 2 p.m.: Prof. Karen Denny on skills to survive in the newsroom.
  • 4 p.m.: Free time / Final work on projects. (Wells, TA coach)
  • 5:30 p.m.: Dinner in Riverdale, La Fantome Food Hall (Meet at Knight Hall board van)

Sunday June 9, 2024

  • Depart

Instructors

Sean Mussenden

Sean Mussenden, a former Washington correspondent, is data editor for the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. He previously oversaw an experiential, hands-on journalism training program at Merrill College that is integral to the college’s “teaching hospital” model of professional instruction: Capital News Service.

He also teaches traditional courses incorporating data visualization, programming, web development, web design, data analysis, social media and computational journalism. Mussenden was appointed to the rank of principal lecturer in 2023.

Derek Willis

Derek Willis, one of the nation’s leading data journalists and an experienced educator, joined the Philip Merrill College of Journalism in Fall 2021 as a lecturer in data and computational journalism.

Willis came to Merrill College having spent 25 years winning awards at some of the top news outlets in the country. His latest stop was ProPublica, where he served as a news applications developer since 2015.

He previously held interactive journalism roles with The New York Times and The Washington Post, after working as a database reporter for The Washington Post, The Center for Public Integrity, Congressional Quarterly and The Palm Beach Post.

Dr. Daniel Trielli

Dr. Daniel Trielli joined the Philip Merrill College of Journalism’s faculty in Fall 2023 as assistant professor of media and democracy.

He researches the impact of algorithmic curation on journalism and political information, and studies how Google affects the news and the audiences that use it to search. He is interested in data and computational journalism, media literacy and algorithmic accountability. Trielli came to Merrill College as a master’s student in 2015 after a 10-year career as a journalist in Brazil at the national newspaper, O Estado de S. Paulo, and the regional newspaper, Diário do Grande ABC.

Adam Marton

Adam Marton is an award-winning journalist and graphic designer who joined the Philip Merrill College of Journalism in 2018 after 13 years at The Baltimore Sun.

Marton is focused on quality storytelling across media, using design and technology to tell rich, human stories. He is a visual journalist and designer specializing in the presentation of the news, including data visualization, front-end development and information graphics.

Dr. Rob Wells

Dr. Rob Wells, a 2016 Ph.D. alum of Merrill College, returned to the university in the Spring 2022 semester after more than five years at the University of Arkansas, where he rose to the rank of associate professor and led Arkansas’ journalism graduate program.

Wells has more than two decades of business journalism experience at The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal.

While at Arkansas, Wells ran ArkansasCovid.com, a statewide daily data and news website reporting on the pandemic. He also partnered with Merrill’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism on multiple projects, including the award-winning “Nowhere To Go” homelessness investigation. Wells is the author of “The Enforcers: How Little-Known Trade Reporters Exposed the Keating Five and Advanced Business Journalism”

Constance Mitchell Ford

Constance Mitchell Ford, a 1977 University of Maryland graduate, is a financial journalist who spent more than three decades covering economics, banking, investing and real estate.

Most of those years were spent at The Wall Street Journal in New York, most recently as the Global Real Estate and Property Bureau Chief. Under her leadership, reporters in the real estate group won dozens of journalism awards and Ford personally received the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for business and economics reporting in 2007 for stories about the subprime mortgage crisis.

Josh Davidsburg

Josh Davidsburg is an award-winning broadcast journalist, documentary filmmaker and 2001 Merrill College alumnus. He also earned his M.A. at Merrill College in 2024.

Following his education, Davidsburg started his career at WMDT in Salisbury; three years later, he moved to Fort Myers, Florida, where he worked for NBC-2 WBBH for two years. He then returned home to work for WBAL in Baltimore and Maryland Public Television, where he reported for two years.

He specializes in streaming media and the intersection between cinema and journalism. His passion lies in the future of journalism and the role streaming video and social media will play in the profession. Davidsburg teaches documentary and broadcast journalism as a senior lecturer.

Karen Denny

Karen Denny is Merrill College’s director of internships and career development.

She previously served as the Annapolis bureau director of the Capital News Service, until taking over leadership of the career center at the beginning of 2022. Denny is a former editor with the McClatchy-Tribune (formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune) News Service, where she founded the wire’s Newsfeatures and International sections, and most recently was a features editor.

She previously worked as the Maryland editor for The Washington Times, and at the suburban Journal Newspapers as an editor and local government reporter. She also served as a professor at Sang Ji University in Won Ju, South Korea.

Christoph Mergerson

Christoph Mergerson, who completed his Ph.D. in Communication, Information and Media at Rutgers University, joined the Philip Merrill College of Journalism in Fall 2021 as a visiting assistant professor. He was appointed to the rank of assistant professor in Fall 2022.

Mergerson’s research and teaching interests include journalism history, weather journalism, race and media, and journalism and democracy. Mergerson arrived at Merrill with ongoing research that examines whether news media in the Southern United States are producing racially inclusive, public-service journalism.

He brings award-winning classroom experience from teaching courses at Rutgers, including Communication Law and Global News.

Kevin Blackistone

Kevin Blackistone is a longtime national sports columnist now at The Washington Post, a panelist on ESPN’s “Around the Horn,” a contributor to National Public Radio and coauthor of “A Gift for Ron,” a memoir by former NFL star Everson Walls published in November 2009 that details his kidney donation to onetime teammate Ron Springs.

Blackistone was a sports columnist for AOL Fanhouse from October 2007 to March 2011 and an award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News from September 1990 to September 2006.

Blackistone is a recipient of numerous awards, including awards for sports column writing from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors, for investigative reporting from the Chicago Newspaper Guild and for enterprise reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists.

Resources

Campus Map